On the hottest day Los Angeles had ever known, Dane Cook would not be bothered with a restaurant menu. Sitting down for dinner last month in an Italian cafe on the Sunset Strip, Cook told the waiter he'd like to have a "chicken situation," which, not to be confused with "The Situation," translated into a grilled chicken breast, put on a plate alongside any pasta and "some sort of sauce." Cook may be a comedian who has thrived by making up his own slanguage, but he's also very Hollywood and has been for years, despite the Boston heritage and sports gear he often wears. Then again, perhaps he's still the same guy he's always been. The same kid who worked at Burger King, who learned at an early age that at the BK Lounge, you can always have it your own way.
Twenty years after his BK days, Dane Cook is very rich and very famous, and about to embark on yet another stand-up comedy tour of North America's arenas.
Cook is so rich and so famous, in fact, that he abruptly cancelled the first few stops on his tour -- which now begins tonight in Syracuse -- because he had to deal with the legal aftermath of his half-brother, who recently pleaded guilty to embezzling millions of dollars from Cook while acting as his business manager. That's millions as in $3 million, which was the amount Darryl McCauley had the gall to forge on a single personal check that threw up all sorts of red flags to trip him up in the end.
But Cook is nothing if not resilient.
He has overcome that setback much as he has the backlash to his fame, by plowing forward. The guy who proved the power of social media by building a fan base of millions on MySpace and convincing them to buy his comedy CD in its first week of release has plowed forward. Cook has more than three million fans on Facebook, half that many people following his Twitter feed @danecook, and figured out how to get fans to pay to watch him on UStream.
So where does he go from here?
In what has become almost an annual appointment for us, Cook sat down with me to talk about where he has been, and why he's jumping back on the road after just finishing a North American arena tour last year.
"I think it was close to a million people came out, and I gotta tell you, I was blown away by that, because, to be honest with you, I thought with the economy, the way it was heading. I mean everybody said I was crazy to do that tour when I did, anyways, because it wasn't like, here's a promoter and here's a chunk of money and go out and whatever, I bought that tour. I basically rented those arenas. I don't think people realize that sometimes. I think that people think that it's some kind of in-house deal. Truly, it was like me gambling on myself to go out and give shows for the fans and put on that kind of caliber show that I knew people wanted after having seen Vicious Circle and seen Rough Around the Edges, you know, it's like, wow, I wish I could see something like that. And so I went out, and did that tour. I was blown away and flattered by the amount of people that came out, and I felt like, when I was finished, I was like, alright, I think I'm ready to put the mic down for a while. I kind of saw this two-year thing, where it was like, I'm going to step away from comedy altogether and focus on -- I've been writing a book."
And doing more movies.
"Yeah, even a couple of movies, I've been working with a great team of guys. I'll get into that in a second, but it was really -- more for me, the tour was like, let's step away from all the stuff that I've kind of been doing. I was on a certain rhythm. Some of it I liked. Some of it I didn't. And it was like, let's go out, hang with the fans, have this great 20-year anniversary of comedy, share it with fans, and let's disappear for a little bit. Let me get some people off the team, that maybe aren't participating in a way I would like, get some fresh blood and figure out where we're going to take this whole thing now. But I ended up in the clubs almost every night with some new ideas, and fresh perspective on a couple of things, and next thing you know, six months later, I've got a new hour. And I want to go back out. And the movies I'm being offered. I did three films this year. All indies. Because the bigger ones were awful. Really not funny. And the indies were interesting and scary. Not like anything I had done before, or that people had seen me in. So it was really, I look at it as, minus the stand-up that I'm going back out to do, it was really about picking a new direction, figuring out some new ways to tell stories."
Speaking of telling stories, I saw you tell a story in Montreal at the Steve Martin Gala, and I know you're still working on it here in Los Angeles, about watching the TV show, Disappeared. It struck me that this is the kind of story that I could hear another comic telling at The Moth storytelling series. Have you ever tried dipping into that pool?
"I've been invited. I know Jeff Garlin pretty well. And Jeff has invited me down to a couple of shows that he has put on, but, I just, I never had the time. I never really had the time to go do it. This year went by a lot quicker than I could have anticipated, but that would be something that would excite me, to get out and try something like that."
I ask because living in New York, it seems to me that the trend in New York comedy is toward more and more storytelling-based comedy, and I wonder if you feel that kind of validates the work you've been doing over several years. When you first rose to great fame, some people were knocking you for not being set-up, punch, set-up, punch. And now more and more people are telling longer stories that have jokes peppered through them, but are stories.
"It's interesting, because in this day and age of 140 characters on Twitter, that it was actually my guess that we'd see more Steven Wright type guys. The Mitch Hedbergs. Who are real consolidated and concise, kind of have that Seinfeld, almost the haiku of jokes. I felt it was going more in that direction. Listen. What you said is kinda true. It's a nice nod, I guess, to be like, alright, I was doing something right in the eyes of people I respect and admire, and you know, might have put my feet to the fire a little bit. But even during that time, I never thought I was doing anything that was -- I came up watching Bill Cosby's "Himself." I think we may have talked about this before. It's like Bill Cosby "Himself," Eddie Murphy, and Pryor, these guys that a lot of people look up to, they weren't joke, set-up-punch guys, either. So it was always a little bit of it. Is it nitpicky because yeah, I had stories, and I wasn't necessarily a set-up-punch kinda guy, a joketeller, in the old school, classic sense. But I never really looked at it as I'm doing something so unique. Or I never felt alternative doing that. I just felt like I was emulating people that I admired, who didn't really let you hear the joke. They were just kind of telling stories. So, now, to hear that, is a little bit of validation. It's not a gold star on the head moment, but it's, listen man, it's always nice to be appreciated by other hard-working people -- your peers -- and maybe not just hard-working. Anyone who chooses to do this for a living and really commit to it, and what that really means to like, most normal people, most "squares" wouldn't get that, but being in it, to have other people recognize the sacrifice, to have them say, that works. Yeah, that does feel good."
While I was in traffic, I got to read the LAist interview with you.
"Good to know that you're reading while you're driving."
Only at red lights. Only at red lights.
"I only posted that like nine minutes ago, and you've already read it."
There are plenty of moments in L.A. traffic to stop and read. But it mentions Aziz Ansari, whom you just met. It strikes me as funny on a couple of levels, one because he's going through that rapid rise to ascension/backlash, although probably only a backlash within the comedy community, which is a weird thing in itself. But I'm wondering what you think of the fact that what helped Aziz rise to such a famous level was creating a character that mocked a high-energy comic.
"Right. The Randy thing."
He claims it's not really based on you, but at the same time...
"I saw Funny People for the first time about two weeks ago on cable. I sat down and said, I'm going to finally figure out what this is all about. And you can always tell when someone is having a little bit of fun with you. But I watched it, and this actually reminded me more of some of the Def Jam guys. I've never had music. I've never had sound effects, and stuff like that, playing with a guy behind me. He did one little trick, it was like an old-school comic trick, and I've never used that. And I can say this because he's doing a character. Plus, I'd heard him say at one point or another that it wasn't based on me. I think people wanted it to be based on me because of the high-energy element, but once again, it's like, if someone's being high-energy and saying that's a Dane Cook thing, I kind of look at that as that's a compliment. But meeting Aziz and understanding what that...it may be difficult, I may have said this in the article, so I hope I'm not repeating, but I think what some of those guys are experiencing now is that they sold people a certain bill of sale, like, fuck mainstream, and yet they play into it. Andy Kindler is another guy. I've taken so many knocks from Andy. I think Andy's brilliant. But Last Comic Standing is the height of selling soap. You're selling soap on a network."
And selling soap with your manager!
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